INOCULATION AS AN AGENT FOR DESTROYING RABBITS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3699, 23 May 1883, Page 4

INOCULATION AS AN AGENT FOR DESTROYING RABBITS.

The idea of getting rid of the rabbit pest by inoculating a few rabbits with some contagious diseas'j has often been mooted in this colony, though we are not aware that any definite proposal has yet been made by anyone. In Australia, however, a Mr Anthony Williams, M R.C.V.S.L., of

Sydney, in a letter to tho Argus, points out the fact that tho rabbit is very liable to certain forms of lung disease, which are rapidly fatal, and offers to leave his ordinary •work to give a- trial to inoculation as a decimating agent. He says:—"l feel satisfied that if a few rabbits in proportion to tho numbers existing were captured, inoculated with tho virus of tuberculosis, and turned out again in .such localities as are •vcrriin, that it would bo a. powerful factor in arresting this nuisance, and that it would not interfere in any way with the action of such other destructive measures as it is considered advisable to adopt, except probably as causing tho death of a few dogs which might eat diseased rabbits. As an illustration of the power of destruction •which inoculated tuberculosis would have amongst rabbits I will relate tho particulars of one amongst a .series of remarkable experiments which I carried out in conjunction with Professor Axe in the early part of 1874. In tho February of that year I inoculated a very fine young doe-rabbit with grey tubercle from the lung of a diseased heifer. Throe weeks after this a vigorous buck-rabbit had access to her, and at the termination of utero-gestation she brought forth seven young ones, which were all weakly and much emaciated. In the course of three weeks these little rabbits died from tuberculosis, as also did tho doe n fortnight after. Six weeks later on the buck, who could only have contracted the disease from the inoculated doc, died too. Pout mortem examinations showed internal deposition of tubeiclo in every case. At this time I made in all 10 experiments, in each of which there was the same positive result."